The Building 71 Incident

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A sealed university building, a missing employee, and his last tape.

Platforms: PC
Stores: itch.io
Price: Pay what you want
Rated: 4.6 of 5 from 472 ratings on itch.io
Length: about 30 minutes
Players: 1
Controls: Keyboard and mouse; an interactive tutorial shows the controls at the start
Made by: Scary Cube
Released: 2021

What frightens Between 1997 and 1998 Building 71 at a university in southern Brazil was sealed over a supposed gas leak, yet suspicious activity kept coming from inside. You play the tape recorded by the employee who went in to find its source and was later declared missing by the police, walking dark classrooms and candle-lined corridors through his camcorder.

The Building 71 Incident is a short found-footage horror game by Scary Cube. A university building in southern Brazil was sealed in 1997 after reports of a gas leak, and an employee who went in to record the strange activity inside was never seen again; you play through his tape. It takes about half an hour and is pay what you want on itch.io for Windows.

About The Building 71 Incident

The Building 71 Incident is a found-footage horror game made by Bruno Pressanto, who publishes as Scary Cube. He made it in two months as his undergraduate thesis at a Brazilian university and released it on itch.io in September 2021, in English and Portuguese, and he was still updating it in 2026.

The story is told in a few lines. Between 1997 and 1998 Building 71, on a university campus in the south of Brazil, was closed after claims of a gas leak. During that time people kept noticing suspicious activity coming from inside. An employee, never named, decided to go in and record what was causing it. The police later listed him as missing, and parts of his recording are now being released. That recording is the game.

You see everything through his camcorder: a grainy VHS image with the time and the date, August 1998, stamped in the corner. The tape starts in a parked car and moves into the building, through computer rooms, dormitories with bare mattresses, a room lit blue and corridors lined with burning candles. The fear is in what the camera might catch next and in knowing from the start that the man holding it did not come back.

It is a single sitting, about half an hour by the maker's count, and needs only a keyboard and mouse. It suits players who like analog and found-footage horror told through one tape, in the manner of Chilla's Art's camcorder walks or The Backrooms 1998, and anyone after a short free horror game for one evening.

How to play The Building 71 Incident

Download The Building 71 Incident from its itch.io page (pay what you want, or nothing) for Windows.
Unpack the archive and run the game.
Follow the interactive tutorial at the start to learn the controls.
Walk through Building 71 with the camcorder and look into every room to see what the recording caught.

Screenshots

The Building 71 Incident title art: the words PLAY and The Building 71 Incident over a corridor lined with candles, in a red frame

The Building 71 Incident screenshot: a computer room with rows of old monitors, seen through a VHS camcorder at 7:37 PM

The Building 71 Incident screenshot: a dark corridor with candles burning along both walls, stamped AM 12:19

The Building 71 Incident screenshot: a room lit deep blue with sheets on the floor, stamped AM 12:21

The Building 71 Incident screenshot: a dormitory of bare mattresses and scattered papers under a ceiling light

The Building 71 Incident screenshot: the inside of a parked car at night, seen through the camcorder at 7:29 PM

Tips

Play in a dark room: the camcorder image is dim, and much of what matters is in the shadows.
Take your time in each room; the story is in what the camera shows, not in text.
Choose English or Portuguese before you start.